The rain pounded on my head, but I’d long ceased to notice that I was wet. Truth was, if I shifted like most of my pack had, I wouldn’t care about the rain at all. The problem was at least one of us had to remain human most of the time to keep a look out for trouble better fixed with words than claws and as I was Alpha that someone was me. I shook my head, throwing drops off my blond hair and walked down toward the Hudson River.

I sniffed the air, looking for danger but didn’t come up with any. It was safe for me to wander. It wasn’t like there was all that much for me to do on this rainy afternoon while my pack ran for miles spending time as their Wolves.

My pack. It was still odd for me to think of them that way. Pack to me had always been family. My father, my sisters, even my human mother. They had been pack. But they were all gone now and for whatever joke of a reason I had been brought back. These Wolves I hardly knew, who had only remote links to my father’s pack, needed me to lead them.

And since I’d been born to be an alpha, leading them was what I was doing.

In this screwed up world that never should have been.

I knelt at the top of the cliff and looked down. I could remember this place so well from before. I’d been young here. When this world had been hopping. When I used to stare across the river to New York City across the banks. It had seemed so alive, so constantly busy, and so full of possibility.

Werewolves don’t live in Manhattan, Jason. You’re lucky we can live so close to it.

My dead father’s scolding voice echoed from the past reminding me that no matter how nostalgic I may be, things hadn’t been so perfect back then either. Of course, it was better than it was now. I rubbed at my face. I was tired. We were going to have to seriously start to build permanent structures. After the world ended, my father had preferred a nomadic life, but this was exhausting everyone. I had fifty lost Werewolves and even though I was twenty-three, half the age of the next youngest member of my pack, they looked to me for answers.

Fifty beta Wolves lost to this mess…

We needed houses. I didn’t have the slightest idea how to build them.

I’d been the spoiled son of a doctor. No one had asked me to do any manual labor ever. The best I’d done was put up tents and take them down when we moved.

I sighed. If the universe wanted to stop fucking with me anytime soon that would be great. I’d already died once and now I had to be cloned to come back to this? I couldn’t be reborn, say hundreds of years from now, when this was all worked out?

The scent of a Vampire hit me hard, biting at my senses and making my nose hurt. I stood, turning around. No way in hell should I be smelling one of those metallic aromas right now. It was still the middle of the fucking day.

I needed to see what was happening. Could my nose be deceiving me? It had done so before. I’d thought I had a mate in Rachel Clancy thanks to my senses and that had turned out to be a giant mess. She was human. I was Werewolf and even though the combination worked for my parents just fine it turned out that it wasn’t so wonderful when one half of that deal didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore. Humans didn’t mate, they loved by choice and Rachel hadn’t felt that way for me after a while. That left one half mated and the other… not. I’d gotten the worse end of that arrangement. I had no idea what had happened to her and I’d not sought her out since I’d been back. I didn’t need any more pain. I had enough as it was.

And none of that solved why in the hell I scented a Vampire in the middle of the day. I tugged on my worn coat—who knew why I was even bothering wearing it—and pulled it closer around me.

Vampires lived below ground during the day. There they were sluggish but could move around. Not above ground, not even on rainy afternoons. This much sunlight would kill them. I didn’t move. Maybe I was crazy. Nothing new really, I’d always been borderline off even when the world had been normal and I’d been a teenager.

I hadn’t had control of my Wolf all that well, and I hardly had it under my thumb now. It was possible I didn’t smell anything at all.

In any case, fear didn’t factor in this moment at all. Death came for all of us, and clearly, I didn’t have to stay dead if someone else wanted me back.

So much for heroic endings…

I stepped forward. Better to proceed like I knew what I was doing. The easiest way to follow a scent was on four legs, not two. I called the Wolf onto myself. The first time doing this in childhood had felt like death, but now it was like scratching an itch in the back of my mind. An ever present irritation that could only be fixed by giving into the change.

My bones broke, reshaped, fur appeared where none had been, and my eyesight altered. The whole thing took seconds and then the beast within me drove to the surface. I shook my head back and forth, lowering my nose to the ground for a second before I reared back. The magic of this, the part we could never explain away with science, was that my clothes would be back on my body when I shifted back. They disappeared during the transition and came back. It had always been the part no one could quite explain.

This was my world. In this form there was no doubt. I was Alpha Wolf. I ruled the days and the nights. There was a Vampire out there. I could smell him. Whatever happened to let that thing come out when it didn’t belong in my daytime needed to be corrected. I would end it.

I took off running. This was going to be fun.

The Vampire was moving. That was even better. If he wanted to run, I would chase. Everything was prey. This was my world. It didn’t belong in it. I picked up speed. The quicker it moved, the faster I went until I was outright running. This was a swift undead.

I loved it. There was nothing like sweet victory after pursuit.

I rounded a tree line and abruptly stopped. My Vampire wasn’t alone. No, he had a human female up against a tree. She shook with fear and the scent of it tasted acrid on my tongue. Her anxiety burned inside of me. I didn’t like it. Females were to be protected.

I stalked forward. The Vampire was bigger than it should have been, a whole foot taller than any I’d ever seen before and when it turned to stare at me, there was no human left in its face. The human part of my brain used the word monster.

Yes, it was. But so was I.

I leaped on him, knocking the filthy undead thing to the ground. They smelled like metal, and I hated them. Eating them wasn’t any fun either but I would not allow it to exist in my sunlight. Or moonlight for that matter.

I tore the thing to shreds.

The female cried out and rushed from the tree where she’d been about to die. Good, she was smart. She should go.

I had death to deliver.

It wrapped its arms around my neck and tried to squeeze the life out of me. It was surprisingly strong. While I tore at its leg, it growled, digging its fingers into my skin. I could feel the venom pulsing at me. This would kill a human but I couldn’t be made Vampire. No matter how much the bites stung. I eventually tore it to shreds.

The Vampire tasted wrong. More unnatural than normal and I didn’t know how that was possible. I spit and gagged until most of the taste was out of my mouth. Dizziness assailed me, but I shook it off.

Maybe I’d just sit here for a second.

Vampires didn’t usually give me so much trouble. I took down dozens at a time. There really had been something wrong with this one.

The female’s smell moved over me again, and I lifted my head to look. She stood right in front of me. What was the matter with her? She should have run. If I’d failed she would have been changed into a Vampire.

She knelt down in front of me. Now, that was stupid. People should know better than to show weakness in front of crazed animals.

“I bet you feel a little… wrong.”

The female had a nice voice. All in all, she was lovely all around. Her smell was better than her appearance but that was only because I preferred scent above all things. My human side thought she was beautiful. Dark haired, dark eyed. She was slender and athletic looking. Maybe she wasn’t slender. It was hard to tell. I was tall in both situations.

Did I feel a little wrong? I did. Battle didn’t usually do this to me. I was lightheaded. Granted, I didn’t get to eat as much as I would like. Werewolves needed a lot of food. But yes, this was weird.

“Obviously.” She cleared her throat. She was soaking wet. The female needed to be gotten some place warm and dry. “They’re not normal Vampires. We don’t know what to do with them. I was stupid coming out here but lately it seems nothing I do is working. I thought maybe I could take samples from where one touched something and study it in the lab.”

I staggered to my feet, my back legs swaying a bit. The female needed to be removed from this area before she caught her death of cold.

“What are you doing? You’re not going to be okay if you push it too soon. I know you guys have a resistance or whatever, but you’re bound to feel like hell.” I pushed at her with my nose until she stepped back. I’d do this the whole way to somewhere with a roof if I had to. Hopefully, she’d catch on before that.

“Oomph. Okay. You want me to move. Oh there you go again. Okay. Look I just want you to rest until the poison leaves your system. Surely your Alpha will come looking for you soon. That’s what you call your leader, right? Alpha. Do you guys have one? And I have to say it’s been very nice not fighting Werewolves anymore. It’s enough with just the Vampires.”

The female liked to talk, and I understood the gist of it. She was worried about it. That was fine. I didn’t need help. Sure, I was feeling a little bit drugged, but as long as I didn’t succumb to the Werewolf madness that infected my father and thereby all of us years earlier I’d be fine. Eventually, she picked up her pace, and I trotted along beside her.

There was a small cabin in the distance, and it smelled empty. She could wait out the storm there. Eventually, we must have gotten on the same page because I herded her inside and she actually went. I stopped on the step after she was in. Okay, that was good. The female was where she needed to go.

She turned to look at me. “Oh no. I’m not going to stay in here like some damsel while you keep getting wet, Wolfie. If I am getting out of the rain then you are getting out of the rain. You’re the one with the Vampire bites. Inside. Now.”

No one ordered me around. Toward the end of his life, my father hardly had and he had been my alpha. Yet there I was tromping inside to where she directed. She shut the door behind us. Not that it mattered. Locks were pointless and that door would probably fall off the hinges as soon as actually work.

I was thinking very human-ly but I’d made no move to shift. Something was very… odd.

With the female inside, dizziness wafted through me as though getting her some place dry meant I could actually succumb to whatever this was. She squatted down. “You’re going to be okay. I mean I think you will. If you were human, I’d think you were going to die. But I guess we’re lucky you’re not.” She wiped a piece of her dark hair away from her face. “I’m a doctor. You’d think I could do better than just guessing, but this is all foreign territory to me. I used to work for the enemy and even I don’t know who or what these things are.”

I sat down. Okay. If I was going to pass out, it was better to do it from this position than topping over entirely. I knew what it was to work for the enemy. Forget working for them, I was the enemy. And I didn’t know how to deal with that. Yes, I’d always wanted to just be human.

I sighed. Yes, this was thinking like one of them for sure.

“I’m Margot. Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you helped me. I know how it is to feel… hunted.”

Whoever was hunting this female would have to go through me.

The world went black.

I woke up slowly with a massive headache and still in my Wolf form. It was the middle of the night, and I could smell the woman lying on the floor next to me even before I opened my eyes. She breathed softly, a hand on my fur.

Where was I? It took a second for all of it to come back, and then I groaned, which was more like a huff since I wore fur. Gone as long as I had been, my pack would come looking for me soon. Well, maybe. I didn’t know exactly how long I’d been gone. How many hours had I been here? I was stiff, an unusual sensation in my Wolf body.

She let go of me, which meant she might know I was awake. “Oh good. You’re up. You know what? It occurs to me that I am talking to you like you’re human. Maybe you don’t understand me.”

Werewolves could always understand humans when they spoke. I also felt fairly confident that I’d never misunderstand a word this woman said, ever. She was… fascinating. I pulled myself to my feet. She smelled of roses. It had been longer than I could actually fathom since I’d smelled any, but I remembered the scent. It was… familiar. My mother used to fill the house with them because she liked them until my sister Autumn said they made her Werewolf senses go haywire. Mom stopped after, giving up what she loved to make my sister more comfortable. They were loving memories. At some point, I’d been a good son. Hundreds of years before.

But I remembered.

I shook my head. There was an edge to Margot’s aroma, telling me she was hungry. Also, she’d been soaked. In addition to her hunger, I could smell that she had that soggy she needed to bathe to get the rain off her thing going on, too. I should shift.

The thing was I liked looking at her. My eyes took her in and the sight just filled me with… ease. It traveled all through me like a hot bath. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this way. Or maybe it was fairer to say that I couldn’t just stare. As a human, that was considered odd. Outed as a Werewolf a long time before, one would think I’d be comfortable with my own inhumanity. Sure, I should. But I’d never gotten there and my new cloned self hadn’t changed it.

With my Wolf eyes I gazed at her, and she didn’t make any indication that she minded.

“I’m glad you’re okay. You saved my life.”

I guessed I had. It had been a long time since I’d saved anyone, too. It was time the female—Margot—and I spoke, too. I wasn’t enough in my Wolf’s head. This in between thing was odd. I’d never had it happen before.

I called the shift. Her eyes widened, and she gasped as I resumed my human form. My blond hair fell in my eyes, and I pushed it away.

Her lips fell open. “Sorry, that was the first time I saw it in person. Before was always on a video screen. A distance… and… and… and you’re Jason Ulysses Kenwood, aren’t you?”

I tugged on my coat. I’d hate to have been standing there naked as the day I was born. “Long time since I heard my middle name.”

And how did she know it? Who was this woman?

She let out a long breath. “Sorry, that must have been weird.”

“Lots of things are weird. You’re hungry.” I nodded toward the door. “The rain stopped. Let’s go find food.”

She blinked rapidly. “I…You go ahead. I’m going to hide out the night here. I was crazy going out to find one of those daywalking Vampires, but there are only a few of them. I’m not going to be good if we find a whole slew of regular Vamps. They’ll eat me alive. I have no fighting skills. None whatsoever.”

Well, that was a problem to be dealt with in the future. “I’m as much a monster as they are. Nothing will get near you, Margot.” It was kind of fun to say her name. I hadn’t spoken to a woman who wasn’t old enough to be my mother in too long. “We can find you food and deposit you at Genesis. Or just bring you back there and you can eat there.” That made more sense when I thought about it. The trouble was I couldn’t enter Genesis, and I kind of wanted to eat with her. It would be nice to have company for a little bit longer. “That’s where you’re from, right?”

I couldn’t imagine she’d have traveled a greater distance than that and managed not to die if she really had no fighting skills at all.

She nodded. “That’s where I’m from. Or where I’m living now. I’m a clone, actually.” Anxiety tasted like sour milk, and it went over my tongue. But it wasn’t from me. It was her. “You may have seen me before. Doubleday likes to make a lot of us. I wanted you to know that wasn’t me.”

“I’ve never seen you before.” I had seen Doubleday when I woke up in the cloning machine in her house of horrors, but I’d never seen this woman. I wouldn’t have put the two of them together.

“I’m her clone. But I don’t remember it or anything. I’m not evil or psychotic. I don’t think. Not yet anyway. I’m sort of studying myself to see when that’ll happen. Shut up, Margot. Talking too much. You know Rachel is married to Chad right? I mean, I know you thought she was your mate. I kind of watched that whole situation. Oh dang it. Shut up.”

She covered her mouth.

Any pain I would have had about that didn’t come. She’d not told me anything I didn’t already suspect. “Come on, Dr. Margot. Let’s get you home. Nothing will hurt you tonight. You have your own private monster to keep the others away.”